8.5 Mile Ride in Niskayuna
Saturday, December 8, 2007
photo slideshow
Today was supposed to be the better of the two days this weekend, both temperature and weather-wise, so I decided to get out for a ride and save my run for tomorrow. Since the streets and sidewalks around here are fairly clear, I decided to get in a few miles on one of my road bikes... a choice which ultimately led to a number of problems...
Once again, I set out from the Niskayuna Lions Park along the Mohawk River. I was hoping to ride the hills by KAPL and GE, so I headed west, and encountered the first signs that my ride might not go as well as I'd hoped - although the path west had been plowed and is fairly open, there were still some pretty sizeable patches of ice along the edges... in spots the sections of bare path were only a few feet wide. As I came up on the road crossing, I discovered a second problem - the path from Lock 7 Road to the old landfill was completely covered with a thin layer of snow and ice.
I took the road up to the Lock and then tried the path from there... the snow was packed enough that it was actually rideable, albeit slowly. I definitely would have been better off with my mountain bike! The long hill up the edge of the old landfill looked fairly clear, so I rode up it, only to find that near the top there was far too much ice to ride back down safely (even walking the bike down would have been tricky.)
Having made it that far, I headed down to the parking lot for Blatnick Park, and discovered that the path up past KAPL and GE was also covered in ice and snow... and since that section is almost non-stop hills, I decided to pass on riding there. Instead, I headed down the road, figuring I could follow it back to Lock 7 Road and hop back on the plowed section of the path there.
I generally avoid riding the roads over that way because there's a lot of traffic and everyone seems to drive very fast. Fortunately, there were wide shoulders for much of the way, and when I reached the section where they were narrower, there wasn't as much traffic. It's also downhill, which made for easy riding. Unfortunately, partways down one of the hills there was a loud snap from my front wheel and the spoke which had snapped started bouncing around. So I kept my speed down, and managed to make it back to the path without any problems. I'm definitely going to have to rebuild that front wheel this winter with the stronger spokes I used on the back wheel.
Back on the path, I made my way back to the parking lot, weaving around the few folks out walking and one fellow out on roller blades. Then I made the final mistake of my ride - instead of pulling into the parking lot, I decided to keep going east on the bike path. Just past the barrier the path turned to sheer ice, and both the bike and I ended up on the ground. Fortunately, I was barely moving at the time, but I still gained a pretty good scrape on my right knee and smacked my right hip into the ground, which hurt like heck. But I picked myself up and hobbled back to the car pushing the bike and shaking my head at my foolishness.
Perhaps in the future I'll remember -
- winter = mountain bike, dummy!
- attempting to ride on ice is stupid; attempting to stop on ice is even more stupid
- the only part of the bike path I can count on being relatively clear is the Gerbil Wheel
We'll see how my hip and groin are feeling tomorrow... hopefully well enough that I can go for a run, even if it's a short flat run rather than the longer hilly run I was hoping to do.
JMH
